INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENT Volume-5, Issue-4, Sep-Nov 2016 ISSN 2091-2854 Received:22 November 2016 Revised:2 January 2017 Accepted:5 January 2017 RECYCLING OF DATE-PALM FIBER TO PRODUCE Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus MUSHROOM Mustafa Nadhim Owaid1,*, Sajid Salahuddin Saleem Al-Saeedi2, Idham Ali Abed3 1 Department of Heet Education, General Directorate of Education in Anbar, Ministry of Education, Heet, Anbar 31007, Iraq 2 Department of Biology, College of Science, University of Anbar, Ramadi, Anbar 31001, Iraq 3 Department of Soil Science and Water Resources, College of Agriculture, University of Anbar, Ramadi, Anbar 31001, Iraq *Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract In this study, some local available organic matters, which are including wheat straw (Triticum aestivum), sawdust, and fiber of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), were used for growing and cultivating of bright yellow oyster mushroom Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus. The possibility of using date palm fiber (in mixtures with other organic residues) as a substrate for the cultivation and production of fruiting bodies of P. cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus was investigated. This mushroom is capable of biorecycling and utilization of some mixtures of lignocellulosic substrates successfully, especially the mixture S3 (50% wheat straw, 30% sawdust, and 20% date palm fiber). The lower mycelia completion time was 17 days, that shown in bags of the S3 substrate. Date-palm fiber substrate exhibited best growth intensity level (moderate) significantly (p<0.05). The total yield and biological efficiency percent recorded approx. 90 g and 23% on the S3 substrate respectively, as a higher percent significantly (p<0.05), while sawdust substrate alone was an unsuitable medium for cultivation and production of this mushroom. Finally, the use of date- palm fibers in mixtures is usefulness in producing a fresh edible and medicinal mushroom. Key words: Yellow oyster mushroom, date palm fiber substrate, morphological properties, yield. International Journal of Environment ISSN 2091-2854 56 | P a g e Introduction Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus, bright yellow oyster mushroom, is a white rot fungal strain, one of seventy species of genus Pleurotus which belongs to the higher Basidiomycota (Chang and Miles, 2004). This species produces light-yellow fruit bodies with an edible stem centrally located in relation to the pileus. The fruit bodies are distinguished by their high taste values. The growth of its mycelium is slower than that of other species; therefore, the substrate is more susceptible to the danger of infection (Ziombra, 2000). P. cornucopiae could be suggested as a new potential source of natural therapeutic use in many remedies. The presence of mevinolin compound in P. cornucopiae tissue leads to use its basidiocarp as a pharmacological agent to decrease the level of cholesterol (Pieckenstain et al., 1999). The antihypertensive effect of D-mannitol of P. cornucopiae was confirmed in spontaneously hypertensive rates by oral administration (Hagiwara et al., 2005). Further, P. cornucopiae possesses nephroprotective, antioxidant and anticancer properties in vivo (Kim,et al., 2009; Suman et al., 2014). Recently, it is consider to be useful for pharmaceutical and food industry because of its content from 6-Octadecenoic acid, cis-13-Octadecenoic acid and cis-Vaccenic acid and some macro and micro minerals such as K, Na, Ca, P, S, Al, Mg, Fe, Cu, Mn, Zn and Se (Parmar and Kumar, 2015). From another hand, industrially, P. cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus capable of decolorization for different textile dyestuffs in vitro (Kalms et al., 2007). Pleurotus cornucopiae is useful to degrade hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin in some botanical organic wastes (Chaudhary et al., 1994). Furthermore, P. cornucopiae was successfully grown and cultivated at 18 and 23 °C with a 12 h photoperiod and light intensity of about 500 lux on barley straw, rice straw (Delmas and Mamoun, 1982; Baukhandi, 1989), sugarcane bagasse (Chaudhary et al., 1994), rye straw (Ziombra, 2000), wheat straw, cottonseed hulls, switch grass (Panicum virgatum) (Royse, 2002; Royse et al., 2004), rubber tree sawdust with rice bran (Owaid et al., 2015) and some of their mixtures. Recently, only few studies used date-palm residues and wastes in evaluation of growing and production of some edible mushrooms such as Agaricus bisporus (Hamodi and A.M. Hameed, 2013), Pleurotus ostreatus (Daneshvar and Heidari, 2008; Hassan, 2011; Kabirifard et al., 2012; Al- Qarawi et al., 2013; Alananbeh et al., 2014; Owaid et al., 2016b), Pleurotus florida (Alkoaik et al., 2015), Pleurotus eryngii (Owaid et al., 2016a), Pleurotus salmoneostramineus (Owaid et al., 2016b), Pleurotus sajor caju and Calocybe indica (Al Shamsi, 2016). Generally, some reports were demonstrated that date-palm wastes might be burned in the rural areas for cooking and/or heating processes. In Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE), date-palm wastes and residues were introduced from some local universities as agro-substrate to grow and cultivate A. bisporus, Pleurotus spp. and Calocybe indica. The increasing availability of date-palm wastes has mushroom growers to consider the use of these huge lignocellulosic wastes to produce an edible mushroom in farms in these countries International Journal of Environment ISSN 2091-2854 57 | P a g e successfully. Iraq is one of the developing countries around the world, the pollution has increased because of the high amount of date-palm wastes that are buried or burned. Thus, this work leads to the need of serious solutions for myco-recycling these wastes. According to this issue, this experiment was achieved in Iraq for evaluation of growth, total productivity and biological efficiency of mushroom Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus on date- palm fibrillum, sawdust, wheat straw and their mixtures amended with a raw fertilizer phosphate rock by using an easy method and in a low cost. Materials and methods Strains Mycelia of the bright yellow oyster mushroom Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus was obtained from the MushroomBox Co., UK, and subcultured on potato dextrose agar medium at 25 C° for this experiment. Spawn was proliferated on seeds of millet (Pennisetum americanum) as mentioned by (Chang and Miles, 2004). Agro-substrates and supplements In this experiment, using locally surplus organic wastes (Fig. 1), available in Heet city, Iraq, were the wheat straw (Triticum aestivum), sawdust, and fibrillum (fibers of date palm, Phoenix dactylifera L.), which first chopped into small pieces (5×5) cm and mixed together in five combinations to use in this experiment. There are S1 substrate (wheat straw alone as a control), S2 substrate (70% wheat straw, 20% sawdust and 10% date palm fiber), S3 substrate (50% wheat straw, 30% sawdust and 20% date palm fiber), S4 substrate (sawdust alone) and S5 substrate (date palm fibers alone). All substrates were amended with 5% fertilizer phosphate rock (based on dry weight), obtained from State Company for Phosphate in Anbar province, Iraq. Fig 1: Organic materials; S1: wheat straw (control); S4: sawdust of factories of wood; S5: date palm tree surface fiber from bark surface or Mesh (Fiber) as a source of fibrous particles. International Journal of Environment ISSN 2091-2854 58 | P a g e Preparation of agro-substrates and cultivation of P. cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus After soaking of agro-substrates, all mixtures were disinfected by boiling in a hot water for 2 h, cooled, put on a clean place to drain out excess water and mixed with 5% rock phosphate powder. The inoculation with 4% mushroom’s spawn based on wet weight (Delmas and Mamoun, 1983) was applied in the Layers Method within polyethylene bags (which capacity 30×50 cm) contain 1.5 kg of the substrate. The inoculated bags were transferred into an incubation room, darkly incubated at 22-25 °C for the spawn running. After colonization of each substrate, the polyethylene was removed; then the temperature and relative humidity (HR) maintained at 16-18 °C and 90% respectively, lighted 12 h/d by using fluorescent light and fresh aeration with spray watering twice a day for the fruiting stage (Baukhandi, 1989). Determinations are including mycelium completion time (MCT), growth intensity level (GIL), primordial formation time (PFT), times of the cropping, the total yield, biological efficiency, clusters’ number, fruiting bodies’ number, the diameter of pileus, the thickness of pileus, the length of stipe and the diameter of stipe (Chang and Miles, 2004). Statistical Analysis The data has been expressed using their means and standard deviation (SD). The data were collected in triplicates and analyzed in one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) by version 9.0 of SAS statistical program for windows 7 (SAS Institute Inc., USA). Significance of difference was determined by DMRT (Duncan’s Multiple Range Test) accordingly. Probability values least than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. Results and discussion Growth properties of P. cornucopiae : Using various agro-substrates in oyster mushroom cultivation has an effect on its growth properties. In significant (p<0.05), S4 (sawdust), S2 (70% wheat straw, 20% sawdust and 10% date palm fiber) and S5 (date palm fiber) substrates exhibited long mycelium completion time (MCT) of yellow oyster mushroom Pleurotus cornucopiae var. citrinopileatus 23, 22.3 and 22 days respectively, while S3 substrate (50% wheat straw, 30% sawdust and 20% date palm fiber) showed lower MCT (17 days) compared with the control medium (S1, wheat straw) (18 days) as showed in Table 1. S5 substrate exhibited higher primordial formation time (PFT) 36 days significantly (p<0.05), followed by S4, S3 and S2 substrates 27, 25 and 23 days respectively, whereas the control recorded the lowest time about 18 days. S1 and S5 substrates had 2nd growth intensity level (GIL) significantly (p<0.05), while the others had the 1st level (table 1). In general, fungi have certain requirements in order to digest and decay date-palm parts which containing complex carbohydrates (Al-Juruf, 2002).